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Ratings
Games Fewer Than Five People Have Rated
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1 Cup | Not serious entertainment |
2 Cups | A reasonable game, worth a try |
3 Cups | A good game, worth playing |
4 Cups | A great game, well worth your time |
5 Cups | An outstanding, must-play game! |
Please understand that the main purpose of the ratings is to help potential game players find high quality, bug-free games to play. You've probably learnt a lot about AGS as a result of making your first game -- so why not use that knowledge to start afresh, and do even better with your next game!
A Tale of Two Kingdoms
Windows
Short Game | Can be completed within 30 minutes |
Medium Length Game | Takes at least 30 mins to finish |
Full Length Game | As long as a Sierra / LucasArts classic |
Non-Adventure Game | Using Adventure Game Studio for something else?! |
Joke Game | You know when it fits this category ;) |
Demo | Unfinished Games / Commercial Games |
Training Game | Games made just to try out AGS |
<Category Not Set> | Not yet categorised |
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None
Occasional, mild
English
Public Opinion
You have already voted for this game, thanks. Want to change your votes?About this game
This version of A Tale of Two Kingdoms is no longer available. It was remade as a commercial Deluxe Edition – see here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2207A Tale of Two Kingdoms is an epic faerie tale, in the classic style of the famous Sierra and LucasArts graphical adventure games. It is a full-length game with an atmosphere of fairy tales, magic, and intrigue.
Featuring five different endings; several sidequests and alternate solutions; teamwork with non-player characters; 75 minutes of high quality music; and director's commentary.
PC Zone UK has named it the Freeware Game of the Month, November 2007.
Games For Windows magazine has done a feature on ATOTK, January 2008.
GamePro magazine has done a feature on ATOTK, January 2008.
The ancient kingdom of Theylinn is beset by enemies both from within and without. Within the castle walls, nobles vie for the old King's favor, and not everybody is happy with the sole heir to the throne, princess Rhiannon.
Meanwhile, danger approaches, in the form of an invading army, a hostile giant, and a mercenary troop who are ancient enemies of the Theylann king.
And there is mystery yet. For hidden within the borders of Theylinn lies a second kingdom, named Thierna na Oge, where the faeries reign. Little is known about this shrouded, exotic realm.
AGS Awards Wins
Won, Best Puzzles 2007
Won, Best Animation 2007
Won, Best Use of Sound 2007
Won, Best Documentation 2007
AGS Awards Nominations
Nominated, Best Demo 2006
Nominated, Best Game Created with AGS 2007
Nominated, Best Story 2007
Nominated, Best Dialogue Writing 2007
Nominated, Best Non Player Character 2007
Nominated, Best Gameplay 2007
Nominated, Best Background Art 2007
Nominated, Best Character Art 2007
Nominated, Best Music 2007
Nominated, Best Programming 2007
46 people commented on this game (newest first):
I had problems with the inventory though. Firstly, I found the circular inventory display frustrating since it made locating a particular object rather difficult. With a typical grid style, your eye can travel both horizontally and vertically and you can group objects together which facilitates your search. With the circular display you've got to look at items one by one as your eye travels around the circle. This was not helped by new items apparently inserting themselves at random positions in the inventory. Secondly, my inventory ended up to be rather bloated (3 pages of items). I realized later that these items were the remnants of side quests that I had missed. But having all these additional items in this kind of arrangement made it difficult to solve the main quest. I'm not sure if it's feasible, but I would have liked to lose items if I missed the entrance to their respective side quests.
But, nit-picking aside, a captivating story and interesting characters made for an enjoyable game.
If any game is a showcase of what can be achieved with AGS, this is it. I would consider this to be the pinnacle of AGS games. The only negative (and it is a minor one) is that there is a certain luck factor- often there are multiple ways of resolving a situation and often one or the other will negate the possibility of achieving the good ending, although sometimes there are no clues as to which course of action is the ideal.
A great game, many confounding puzzles and head scratching moments
Why are you still reading this comment? go play the game.
Others have praised the game for music and playability and graphics, let me applaud you for RESEARCH!
Who in the bloody blue blazes pulls Taliesin out of mythology and works him into a story?! Who uses the fae and bothers to work in pranks and changelings babes and being caught for centuries by the queen?!
My hats off to you non-linear play as well - It drives me nuts some times - but it was beautifully managed.
There was only one minor con:
[hide] I wasn't allowed to save my game in the goblin camp, and the opportunity to escape was short. I wished I could have saved it while in the cage so I didn't have to go through that whole long sequence of getting caught, waiting for dark, etc. each time before getting another chance to escape. I'm sure from the author's point of view, getting the object needed and getting out of there seemed pretty straightforward, since the object was in plain sight. However, what threw me off was the fact that you could enter the tent- I thought there must be something you had to do in there. [/hide]
It also contains modern day gaming mechanics, by which I mean; multiple endings, side quests and multiple solutions. I also liked the Honor and Wisdom points; the best solution gives out the most points, which is a really neat factor, and adds replay value.
Its a great game, its lengthy, and I wish there were more like it.
One tiny annoyance: the 'oldspeak' (mayhaps, methinks, thee and thou). It feels forced and is often used incorrectly ('thou' being used as the polite form, when it should be 'you'!)
Overall, this is an AGS masterpiece that holds its own alongside the Classics of Sierra.
I want to translate your game in french.
If you agree, send me an email to this address:
kaldaya@hotmail.fr
and I contact you. Thank you. :)
But for me it was too "heavy".
The lack of humor really made me quit on this game.
And the characters faces always seem to be so sad...
The story is for want of a better word a little on the fruity fantasy side. Far too fairies for my personal taste each one more irritating than the next.
intentional humour is sparsely scattered, a game like this needs humour in a large dose badly as a diversion from the various annoyances that will niggle at you as you play. This would include the fact that you spend a lot of time trudging around between locations. At times the manner in which the characters speak can be gruesomely hackneyed and horrible to witness.
All this aside the game is pretty, it's stable and most of the puzzles make sense with a few noted exceptions. It looks very nice and that is to it's credit.
It also proves that a time-honored format that many of us geeks wistfully pine for can be successfully married with new material. If it isn’t the first of its kind, it’s still a milestone. Its hefty download time can be excused by the facts that a) it’s free and b) its brilliant.
There were too many 'optional' subplots -- they should be made easier to solve and integrated into the main plot.
Unfortunately, I think some of the puzzles did not make much sense. I also thought the plot, and especially the character, did not develop very well.
some of my major concerns were the really badly designed puzzles (exactly those kind of puzzles that killed off adventure games in the first place), i mean, why would a vase lie in the middle of the a floor, and in it hidden the king's scepter, which everyone is frantically looking for. how? how did everyone who is looking for this scepter not see the vase in the middle of the floor in an otherwise empty hallway? how did the king manage to lose his scepter into a vase? how did the scepter fit into the vase? where did the vase come from? this is the 1st puzzle in the game (felt really tacked on) but it just didn't get any better.
storywise i there's a lot of things that doesn't make sense. sometimes you just don't know what your suppose to be doing.
some of the backgrounds were really beautiful, unfortunately some of them just wasn't. inconsistency is the game's biggest flaw. where some backgrounds would have fitted nicely in a commercial games, others (like the city street bgs) just felt very amateurish.
so too the sprites. too many people with different sprite style, i guess. i could recognise big brother's sprites a mile away.
the whole murder mystery thing seemed like a disaster.
it seems a "selling point" of the game is its "multiple solutions" to puzzles. its all good and well having multiple puzzle solutions, but when the puzzles itself is really badly designed, it kinda makes the whole ordeal pointless.
in the end, i think this game has great potential, but inconsistent graphics, poor puzzles and a dicy murder mystery conclusion really breaks the experience. game design is what it comes down to i guess.
it seems the designer read a lot of things of what people wanted in an adventure games (eg multiple solutions) and just threw everything into the game.
though, commendable effort! and like you've said, 10000 downloads can't be wrong. just wondring what they can't be wrong about.
This game has so much effort and charm to it that I feel like it's bad that I have played this game for free. But tho, the joys of AGS/BigBlueCup.
I love that you can muddle through the game without having to solve every puzzle to progress, but still with good difficulty. It sure beats trying to find that one last thing to do to progress in a game and you're exploring all over the place on a huge map with no idea where to look.
Then there is the music and cutscenes and animation that just make this game excel in my book.
I LOVE adventure games of this sort. I am HOOKED! Fabulous work, guys!!
Definitely recommended!!!
Much of the music I've heard so far generally suits the mood while some of it seems to over-rely on effects and well, the song in the city sounded way too pop bland for my tastes.
In terms of puzzles, it's a bit messy. Many of them are quite fun, really. But it's better to only scatter and mix a few of them while ensuring that the other puzzles open up in progression once you've completed the first batch or so.
Furthermore, the events or clues required to solve the puzzles should not be overtly random.
The story, though, sounds pretty interesting. I guess I'll just have to see if I can beat this darn maze.
Bravo, a true masterpiece!!!
So there were some kings and their kingdoms and some were bad and some were good and they fought some great battles and they fought for some long years and... and why should I care I say?
But then, Sierra-style games are not my cup of tea anyway...
What I really like about the game, though some seem to be put off by it, is that you cant get a 100% score by trial and error. Yes, some puzzles can be considered "unfair" because there is no clear hint to try this or that.. the only way to find these things is to make up your mind about what you like to do and then try to make it work.
Most games can be solved by simply trying everything again and again, but in this game it is possible to continue with a suboptimal solution so you'll have to be really careful if you want a perfect score. Two thumbs up.. as far as I've come so far (restarted 3 times already..) this design seems to be effective (if the idea actually was to prevent trial-and-error solutions..).
There.. btw, I just made a forum account just to write this comment. ;)
On the flipside, some of the puzzles were quite ambiguous. You will most possibly complete the game without solving 50% of the puzzles which are optional (but which you'd want to solve), then if you read the walkthru to find out what you missed, you will mostly go "now how the hell was I supposed to know that!"
Just some things I didn't like about this game:
- You need to die or otherwise end the game to solve puzzles.
- Some puzzles not being hinted at needing to be solved.
- Not hotspot descriptions, meaning you had to click on almost everything on screen to see what's there.
The amount of things to do in this game and the different ways to accomplish tasks are staggering. I think this game will stand the test of time as one of the best AGS games ever.
However, my experience of playing the game was similar to that of another reviewer - I spent a lot of time wandering around wondering what I was supposed to be doing, and far too much time scouring the Hints & Tips forum, alas. I completed the game with a low score and saw there was lots I hadn't done, but it wasn't clear to me what how I could have done it.
But maybe that was just me. An enormous amount of effort from a large team of people has gone into this huge "King's Quest"-like game and what they have achieved is truly impressive. Play it, then play it again to see what you have missed and whether you can improve on your score.
I admire the graphics, soundtrack and astonishing number of game responses, but the whole game leaves me cold.